iPhone Nano arriving in June?

Some careless words - or carefully planned ones, depending on how you look at it – thought to have come from a United Arab Emirates telco executive may have uncovered the launch date for the iPhone 3G’s successor.

When Mark Davis, Program Director for iPhone at Etisalat, announced on Monday that the iPhone 3G would launch in the UAE on 15 February, he also reportedly let slip that "next version of the device” is “due out in June”.

However, it's worth noting that some online reports have questioned whether the reference to June was a direct comment by Davis or was simply a paragraph within the original story from which Western coverage of his comments has devolved. That said, most observers agree that the date appears to have come from Davis himself.

Apple blogs around the world have since erupted with speculation that this is definitive proof that the firm’s crafted a new iPhone.

We'd point out that June is the month in which Apple released both the original iPhone and the current iPhone 3G, and since Apple likes to issue updated products year in, year out, it's reasonable to assume that any iPhone successor will debut then.

Rumours of a smaller device – commonly dubbed the iPhone Nano – have been doing the rounds for months, and Davis’ comments will also fuel speculation that’s already focused on images of Nano-size cases, claims by chipmakers and shots of oddly worded Apple XML code as proof of a new iPhone model. ®